Just call me the "Girl on Fire"

     This year Eek is starting an archery team and I took the job of coaching the team. Last weekend Dirk, Brett, and I all went through Basic Archery Instructor training. A guy that coaches archery in Bethel came out to Eek and gave us the training. It was awesome! I have been waiting for this since the beginning of the year. The training was for NASP, which stands for National Archery in the Schools Program. It is a really great program that is used in schools all over the world. There are competitions on the local, state, national, and international level. It is a very structured program and I really learned a lot from the training. I am much more comfortable shooting a bow now.

This is a heavy duty curtain we hang up and it catches all the arrows if they miss the target. This enables us to shoot inside.

The teachers become the students. Better study hard Dirk!

                         Not to shabby....                  Learning how to carry our arrows properly.

The range all set up, it is pretty cool.

Yeah, that's mine....

Practicing the "11 Steps to Archery Success."

     With NASP there are several steps the students have to go through before they can handle the actual bows. First, they have to practice with "String Bows," these are used so that students can safely learn the "11 Steps to Archery Success." 

The 11 steps are: 

1. Stance 

2. Nock Arrow 

3. Drawing Hand Set 

4. Bow Hand Set

5. Pre-Draw

6. Draw

7. Anchor

8. Aim

9. Shot set-Up

10. Release

11. Follow Through/ Reflect

     This is a really great program and I think the students will really enjoy it. The team is open to students in grades 6-12. We have a lot of interest for the team, about 30 students, so it will be interesting to see how the season pans out.

Speech Contest in Bethel

     I decided to coach the high school speech team this year. I had a couple high school students that were interested. They had to pick a category and then pick their speeches. The categories were in English and Yup'ik and they could do expository, original oration, humorous, or dramatic. One of the students did a humorous and the other did dramatic. They both worked very hard practicing and getting their speeches just right. They had to give their speeches in front of the junior high and high school here in Eek, then we submitted videos of their speeches. The speeches were reviewed and scored and the top five students in each category got to travel to Bethel to compete. Both of my students made it, which was really exciting.

Elena and Florence getting ready to take off for Bethel.

     On November 11th and 12th we were in Bethel for the competition. They had a preliminary round on Tuesday night and then the finals were on Wednesday. Both of my students did awesome and I was so proud of how hard they worked. We got to see some really great speeches and the competition was tuff. I am proud to say that Elena placed third in the humorous category and Florence placed first in dramatic.

Getting their awards.

Yay trophies! Go Eek!

So proud of these girls, they worked very hard and it payed off. 

     The top two winners in all the English categories get to go to Anchorage and compete in the Alaska State High School Drama, Debate & Forensics Competition. So Florence and I will be traveling to Anchorage sometime in February for the competition. It was a really great experience for them and I look forward to doing it again next year. Hopefully, I will have more students interested.

Spirit Week and Halloween!

     The student government puts on a Halloween Carnival every year and this year they decided to have a Spirit Week the week of Halloween. Monday was Carhartt day, Tuesday was twin day, Wednesday was wacky hair day, Thursday was school spirit day, and Friday was costume day. Then we had the Halloween Carnival Friday night. There were all kinds of games for the kids to play, including mini golf, and the high schoolers put on a haunted hallway. It was a fun and busy week. I don't have any Carhartts, so I didn't do anything special for Monday.

Lynn, Dirk, Caitlyn, and Kayla

Ashley and I. It was a little trickier for us because we have very different wardrobes. So we both wore our long qaspeqs, close enough!

I went with the "hair" bow for wacky hair day. We had some colored hair, spiked hair, and some messy hair. Pretty wacky!

Lynn's wacky hair. Also, we had to go through all the costumes and stuff for the Halloween carnival. We decided to have a little fun and try out some of the costumes.

The scary clown was a hit! 

Some crazy person (haha) running through the gym and the grim reaper.

Yeah, that's me!

     The first quarter ended the week before so we had our awards assembly on Thursday. Each teacher gives out awards for their classes. I had two highest grades awards, two most improved, and one citizenship award. We also did the drawing for the Cougars C.A.R.E. links and the bathroom passes. Their were also awards given for perfect attendance. It all went pretty well.

Friday was the best, costume day! Caitlyn, Kayla, Ashley, and I went as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Lynn went as Shredder. We made our shells out of cardboard and painted them. They ended up looking pretty cool.

I will admit the shell was a little difficult to sit in because it was so big.

Roomies!

We looked pretty awesome! Definitely a great choice for a group costume idea.

     We also had a staff vs students volleyball game which was a blast. The students won, but it was a pretty close game. There were also parent teacher conference on Thursday and Friday. It was a pretty crazy week, but all in all it was a lot of fun.

More Snow!

     We got some more snow on October 21st. Of course its all melted since then, but it is only a matter of time before we are hit full force with a lot of snow. Ashley and I had a little bit of fun out in the snow. And I snapped some pictures too.

Walking to work, it is about 7:55am in these pictures.

Ashley and Misty

Waiting on Volleyball practice to end. Misty is saying, "Hurry up guys!"

Snowy village...

Walking to the airport with Ashley and Lynn.

Lights of Eek form the airport.

     It has been pretty chilly lately and it gets darker and darker everyday. Winter is coming! It has been kind of warm the last couple of days because of Typhoon Nuri coming in on the Bearing Sea, but it will get cold again, don't you worry! And there is only six more weeks until I go back to Ohio for Christmas break. Looking forward to some family time. Quyana  (thank you) to all my readers! 

October New Teacher Inservice

     A couple weekends ago we had our second New Teacher Inservice in Bethel. Ashley and I actually got in to town on time, which was awesome because we got to visit more and had plenty of time to do some shopping. We all had a pretty good time at this one. We had dinner at the Swanson's grocery store and then we went to see a movie at the new theatre, also in the Swanson's grocery store. The store is brand new and the movie theatre is pretty nice! A bunch of us teachers went to see the Maze Runner. Our tickets cost $13, which wasn't that bad and the movie was really good. Another dystopian universe type movie, I would recommend seeing it if you like those kind of movies.

All the lakes and ponds are freezing over. 

The theatre entrance inside the grocery store. They have two theaters.

Maze Runner

I will have to say, the seats were pretty awesome!

You could rock in them or lay back a little if you wanted.

     For this inservice we talked all about CHAMPS, which is a classroom management system. The speaker basically told us all about the basics of CHAMPS and how we can start to implement and use it in our classrooms. CHAMPS is an acronym for : 

     C- Conversation

     H- Help

     A- Activities

     M- Movement

     P- Participation

     S- Success

It is a really cool management system where you go through basically anything you do; going to lunch, taking a test, doing classwork, small groups, individual work, etc. and you specify what students should be doing during those activities. What their conversation should be like, what to do if they need help, what the activity is, what kind of movement should be involved, who and how they should be participating, and how that all leads to success.

This is my buddy Kourtney. She teaches Middle School in Kwethluk.

I bought a pair of beaded earrings from the airport (someone was selling them there) and my friend Heather decided to photo bomb my picture.

The Eek and Quinhagak gangs waiting for take off!

See you in about three weeks Bethel!

     Finally got to head home to Eek. Bethel is fun, but there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed. We all had a great time as usual though and I always look forward to seeing all my new friends.